From Publishers Weekly
Moses and Peri, who edited
Mothers Who Think, an American Book Award–winning anthology based on a Salon.com column, have gathered some 33 talented mothers (including writers Rosellen Brown, Janet Fitch, Ayelet Waldman and Ann Hulbert, among others) discussing aspects of "real motherhood" today. True, most of their issues—spousal abuse, divorce, cancer, step-parenting, single mothering—aren't new. Some contributors, like Mariane Pearl, the widow of journalist Danny Pearl, have even published their thoughts elsewhere. What's magical about this collection, though, is what happens when such diverse accounts are stitched together in a single volume: a new picture emerges of what it means to be a mother in modern America. Chemo treatments may leave you bald. Your kids may suffer from "KGOY—kids growing older younger," and as they test your limits, you may find yourself "morphing into some authoritarian freak." If you're black, people may assume you're your own child's nanny. But as one woman discovered traveling solo to Cairo to see a particular set of Roman-era memorial portraits in the Egyptian Museum, the acknowledgment "of death, of loss, of suffering, as well as of desire and remembered joy" is all "part of living." Skip the flowers and candy this Mother's Day, and buy this book instead.
Agent, Ellen Levine. (May 1)
From Booklist
The writers of online magazine
Salon's column "Mothers Who Think," and later a book of the same title, offer a collection of candid essays by women grappling with the demands of modern motherhood. The collection of 33 essays encompasses eight by contributors to "Mothers Who Think." Other writers include an unmarried Muslim woman banned from the mosque for having a child, a woman who disdained dolls as a girl but becomes obsessed with American Girl dolls as a weapon against precocity, a mother who laments her white middle-class son's fascination with the misogyny and ghetto worship of rap music, a mother who writes of her adolescent daughter's adjustment to her lesbian lover, and a black mother who was mistaken for the nanny of her biracial child. Essays also address divorce and separation, stepparenting, turbulent adolescence, and waning sexuality, all against the backdrop of war, environmental issues, and the financial woes of modern American life. Women will appreciate the humor and candor, and men will gain insight into the stunning challenges of motherhood.
Vanessa BushCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
